“When I was a kid, the thing that was very hip was the Tiffany charm bracelets, and so when we got to bat-mitzvah age, that was kind of the big hope. Fingers crossed at my bat mitzvah, that’s what I’m going to get—hopefully a charm or something,” Kate Hudson said about when she first became aware of the jeweler. As a grownup, Hudson worked with the company when she produced the 2009 movie Bride Wars. “In the bridal world, Tiffany is the No. 1—see the blue box, engagement ring, ‘Oh my God, my life is just beginning,’” she explained to VF Daily. “Whereas men walk into Tiffany and they’re sweating,” she added, laughing.

We were discussing Tiffany’s because, well, we were standing inside one of its iconic blue boxes. Literally: the company enclosed the Rockefeller Center ice-skating rink in a 30-foot-tall blue box, complete with the logo and topped with a white bow, and inside threw a party to celebrate its newest “blue book”—or catalogue featuring its latest collection.

The Blue Book ball had a Roaring 20s theme, with dancing girls, aerialists swinging trapezes high above the crowd, and a terrific jazz band. On the stage with the Rockefeller Center’s golden Prometheus statue as a backdrop, Megan Hilty did a set of standards and brought down the house with (naturally) “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”

The vast temporary structure featured velvet-curtain walls, an Art Deco rug, and, on custom-made Deco-style tables, piles of lobster tail, filet, shrimp, and decadent desserts. There were towers of Moet Champagne served in 1920s-style coupe glasses. You will not have the opportunity to check out this oversize jewel box—it was a one-night-only phenomenon.

Who was invited to the ball? Four hundred of the company’s top customers, plus some high-profile glamorous types like Jessica Biel and Michelle Williams. Hudson gives her fiancé, Matt Bellamy, props for good taste when picking out baubles. “You know, Matt, when he has bought me jewelry, he’s done a really beautiful job,” she told VF Daily. “So far, so good. There’s been nothing that I’ve ever had to sort of, you know, pretend,” she added.

Choosing jewelry as a gift can, indeed, be problematic, and mistakes are expensive. Gwyneth Paltrow was diplomatic in describing presents she receives from husband Chris Martin. “I think, you know, if someone’s buying you jewelry with heart, they kind of can’t get it wrong, I don’t think, no?” she told us. “I would hope!” she added, laughing.

“I don’t ask for jewelry. I don’t ask for presents,” Sarah Jessica Parker said. “I’m very bad at receiving presents, so I tend to not even lead the witness,” she said. She does not drop hints to Matthew Broderick. “But this is from Tiffany’s,” Parker said, showing us a ring on her finger, a simple band with a small diamond. “And it’s from my husband, and it’s my most favorite piece of jewelry, so clearly, he got something right. That’s all that matters.”

Doutzen Kroes takes matters in hand with husband Sunnery Jones. “I give hints. I will take him [to a store] and just tell him that I was going to buy something for a friend, and I’ll say, ‘Ooh, this is nice,’” Kroes told us. “So he knows my taste.”

Carey Mulligan, who wore oodles of custom Tiffany’s jewelry as Daisy Buchanan in the upcoming Great Gatsby—it’s currently on display at the Fifth Avenue flagship—also advises taking a direct approach to getting what you really like. “I think you kind of have to show them a picture,” she told VF Daily. “Terrible waste of money, otherwise.”